the farming of bones by edwidge danticat

The occupation was received very negatively, inciting even more political instability and violence in the Dominican Republic. However, after the death of Ramon Caceres in 1911, a lot of political instability was brought to the forefront of the country, resulting in U.S.

Dominicans and Haitians had worked together, socialized together, and even inter-married before the conflict. Prior to the tensions ramping up to a peak in 1937, there was a time in which the borderlands between Haiti and the Dominican Republic were a more peaceful place. Sugar cane dominates the economy described in the novel the title, The Farming of Bones, is explained in Chapter 10 when Amabelle refers to process of growing, burning, and cutting cane as 'travay te pou zo', or 'the farming of bones'. As Amabelle tries to escape the government's intentions to 'cleanse the country' by removing Haitians from the Dominican Republic, she travels as far as the Massacre River that borders the Dominican Republic and Haiti. There is a huge gap between the Haitian workers and the rich Dominicans who they work for. Set in 1937, the story starts out in the rural town of Alegría, which consists of many sugarcane mills and plantations that require the cheap and plentiful labor the Haitians supply. Danticat set out to memorialize the victims and their suffering, by telling their stories and spreading knowledge. It tells the story of an orphaned young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic who gets caught up in the carnage of the Parsley massacre during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.īorn in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Edwidge Danticat visited the Dajabón River, across the Haitian border in the Dominican Republic, in 1995 and was surprised to find the people there seemingly unaware of the brutal killings that had taken place there during the Parsley massacre (1937), when tens of thousands of Haitian workers were murdered. Farming of Bones is a work of historical fiction by Edwidge Danticat, published in 1998.

The farming of bones by edwidge danticat